The Information Revolution has been underway since Guttenberg's printing press debuted in 1455. The printing press made information cheap to produce and easy to distribute. The telephone in 1876 made it possible for instantaneous voice communications at a distance, and radio and television broadcasting in the early 20th century, made it cost effective to distribute rich media, audio and video to a widely distributed audience. These inventions facilitated the transmission of information around the world.
The introduction of two technologies, personal computers and cell phones, have created another revolution in information. PCs greatly democratized information creation and management, and the advent of the Internet made it possible to create, access and distribute information globally. The cost of distributing information was reduced to the cost of connecting to the internet. Cell phones created nearly ubiquitous two-way communications, though early models were only voice enabled. The addition of mobility to telephony saw cellular eclipse landline telephones within 20 years of their commercial launch.
One problem with the advent of computers has been at the point of “data entry,” where the user inputs data into the computer or computer device. The most common interface used to input data is a “keyboard, such as a QWERTY Keyboard, which presents a set of individual letters or characters that can be typed by pressing individual keys. However, for efficient data input, two hands must typically be used to type in the various letters and words.
A “chorded keyboard” is an input device that allows a user to enter characters or commands formed by pressing several keys together, typically on a single-hand interface, like playing a “chord” on a piano. The use of multiple key combinations allows a large number of combinations to be available from a small number of keys. This feature allows text or commands to be entered with great speed, and potentially with only one hand. However, chorded keyboards have been difficult for users to become familiar with and use efficiently. The ubiquity of QWERTY and other keyboards has also created significant resistance to the adoption and usage of chorded keyboards and other data interfaces.